


Would-Be

by Ahab2631



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: >_>, Alternate Universe, F/M, One Shot, Too Lazy To Come Up With More, idk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-08 21:21:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12262329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ahab2631/pseuds/Ahab2631
Summary: A little snapshot of what the distant future might look like in a world shaped by The Sun Summoner and The Darkling.





	Would-Be

**Author's Note:**

> Probably needs more editing. Basically my work always needs more editing.

“You’re saying--”

“What I am _saying,”_ he interrupts, leaning in toward the microphones, “is that we are not peasants any longer, and we don't need to subsist on folklore and fairytales! Science has long since demonstrated the source of their power--”

“Heracy!” Someone in the crowd shouts, to rumbling agreement.

“A secret they themselves never made a secret of,” he insists. “These two are not as different as they would have us believe. We have had theories to explain their long lives, theories we may be able to prove, that could be used for the betterment of all mankind, if they would only deign to cooperate! The so-called Saints--”

Hisses and jeering, this time.

“--are nothing more than Grisha!” By the end, he is shouting to be heard, even with his voice magnified and pumping out through speakers. He takes advantage of the first lull to press on. “Incredibly powerful Grisha? Yes. Ancient? Yes. Capable of things no other Grisha in recorded history could accomplish? Yes. They have done much for our nation and for the world, throughout history. No one can argue that, least of all me." He says, his own voice calming as the audience begins to settle. "But that does not mean they are _magical._ We owe them our history, our peace, and I do not, and have never, and will never suggest they should not be honored for that.

“What I am _saying,_ ladies and gentlemen, is that we no longer live in a world where we need oversight by two would-be gods. Two glorified dictators obsessed with their own power and willing to resort to out-and-out lies and parlor tricks to keep it.” The police have a hard time keeping the crowd from the stage, this time. “Where two people,” he shouts, “hundreds of years removed from the memory of what it was like to live among us, to be one of us, to _work_ for what they have, to struggle and face the questions of day-to-day life, never mind modern society, decide what our lives can and cannot look like!”

Near the back of the crowd, a man with dark hair stands next to a woman with waving, auburn locks. She has used this color for centuries when she wanted to go out in secret. A memory of a friend long dead, and a granddaughter she had loved like her own.

“I should have killed him,” the man remarks. It is akin to, “We should have had tacos for lunch.”

“I would have refused to speak to you for at least fifty years.” She pauses. “Hm, no, back then it would have been at least a hundred. I was terribly fond of him.”

“I can be very persuasive.”

“By which you mean there were still people alive who you could have used to threaten me into cooperating?”

He doesn’t answer, and she grins, a small thing. It has been centuries since she had the enthusiasm to feel anything as strongly as the children who make up the crowd do.

“If I had killed him, this idiot wouldn’t be ejaculating all over the microphones.”

“First of all, that’s disgusting. And second, I like dissent. It’s good for the people. It lets them figure out where their passions are. It lets them realign their priorities.” Like clockwork, in fact, every forty years or so. She finds their pace tiring. Like running after a toddler who has infinite energy and a lust for breaking important things.

“By which you mean it lets them start more pointless rebellions that we have to put down.” 

The eager hum at the idea in one is echoed in the other. Neither can or would deny their hunger at any opportunity to unleash themselves. But she restrains it far better than he does. She knows the consequences, and is less eager to ignore them. She has not forgotten. He learned the truth of the third amplifier long ago, but exactly who it had been is perhaps the only secret that remains between them. She protects his memory as she once protected him.

“They’re called revolutions now," she says. "They stopped calling them rebellions when the monarchy was replaced.”

“I’m not going to adopt every word they come up with. They’ll just pick a new one in another hundred years. I could fill a pool with the ones they've discarded in the last fifty years alone.”

“You’d certainly adapted well to modern times when I met you.”

The pace of the speaker and the crowd remains tense, ebbing and swelling, oscillating between attention and outrage. They both have an ear open to it, but it is nothing they have not heard before.

“Things changed more slowly back then," he says. "And I had to blend in.” Without moving, he slips his hand into hers. Without moving, she leans into his shoulder. A shared eternity, something humans might call “love,” but as different from it as a star is from the full moon, passes between them, one spilling into the other. It is long since past when either cared to remember what it was like to live without the other inside of them, without one body standing as both, without each person being the other.

“He’s going to make trouble, Alina,” the man warns in a low voice, jealous of the name even in a crowd that doesn’t know them, can’t know them, even wearing faces they would not recognize.

She sighs. “I know.”

“They’re working on weapons to neutralize our power. Things we won’t be able to stop.”

She is quieter this time. “I know.”

He pauses only briefly. “We can’t let this play out. Not this time. If we don’t step in before it starts, they will have our heads.” She feels his swell of protective rage at the very suggestion that she would be taken. Bitterness and anger and acceptance all wrapped up around the fact that it would never matter enough what they had done for their country. “And the faithful won’t be able to stop them.”

Again she sighs. “Aleksander?”

Wordlessly, he looks down at the top of her head. _What?_ he doesn’t have to say.

“Shut up.”

It is because the man looks so much like his ancestor, the Darkling knows, that she hesitates. So much like the golden-haired boy that befriended her, for a time. So much like one of the few people at the start of her life that took with them pieces of her heart when they died. But the Darkling does not have that problem. He does not remember the face with fondness. Truthfully, neither of them really remembers the face at all. But he remembers this man’s golden hair and carved jaw, and something about the way he stands, with confidence he has made for himself. The Darkling does not see that boy, that King, in the familiar features. He sees only another threat to be put down.

The Sun Queen wonders only if their time may finally be coming to an end. Some things cannot be stopped. Ideas born cannot be snuffed out. Not in this world, where information exists in all places at once. The weapons Aleksander fears will be made, if not by these men, then by others who come after them. There will be no stopping this rebellion.


End file.
